Republican Representative Jim Jordan, supported by former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), was removed by his party colleagues from the race for President of the United States House this Friday (20).
In a secret internal vote, held a few hours after Jordan failed to obtain a simple majority of votes to be elected in the third plenary vote, the Republicans decided to withdraw his candidacy.
The Republicans, who have a small majority in the house, are expected to decide early next week who will be the new candidate. He will be the third nominee – before Jordan, deputy Steve Scalise had received the most votes in the party’s internal dispute last week to seek the presidency of the Chamber, but withdrew before his name went to the plenary because he realized that he would not have enough votes to be elected.
“We’re back to square one,” Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson told CNN. “I hope we find someone who probably never imagined themselves in this role [presidente da Câmara]. Someone who is more interested in doing something than being something. We will need a true leader to step up,” Johnson said.
Jordan himself declared that the Republican Party needs to “unite” to define the new president of the House. “I’m going to work as hard as I can to help this person so we can help the American people,” Jordan said.
Earlier this Friday, Jordan received just 194 votes and fell short of half of the voters to be elected because 25 supporters voted for other names. The Democratic minority leader in the house, Hakeem Jeffries, had 210 votes, all from his party.
In the two previous votes held this week, Jordan had also failed to obtain a majority to be elected, highlighting the division within the Republican Party.
More than two weeks after the removal of Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, the house remains paralyzed because it is unable to elect a new leader.
McCarthy was removed on the 3rd after another Republican, Matt Gaetz, presented a motion to remove him from the presidency of the House because he was outraged by his agreement with the Democrats to approve 45-day emergency funding for the American government.
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